A mosaic portrait of Mugen, Border Collie extraordinaire.

About 12 years ago, I fell in love with Tosca, my sister’s Border Collie !

Tosca in Saint Valery sur Somme, France.

About a year later, a friend of mine having located a breeder with puppies not to far from home,  I went there to look at them. I wanted a black and white female like Tosca. I ended up with a Red Male...

Mugen, 3 month old.

I named him Mugen – a Japanese words meaning Endless or Infinity.

A loving and cheerful companion, Mugen had an endless creativity. Life never was boring around him ! 

Mugen loved water and destroyed a few water hoses...

Extremely loving and sociable, he knew everyone in the neighborhood and everybody knew him, cooked for him, invited him to play, drive, spend the night and they would drive him home. I was just known as Mugen’s Dad...

Mugen, 5 years old

When Mugen accidentally died in 2014 I was heartbroken...

Since I have this year created several mosaic models of beloved pets for their owners, I decided to build a mosaic to celebrate Mugen’s memory, based on the above picture of him.

This is the picture I worked from :

Mugen's Eyes.

Using my Opus Pixellatum technique to realize this project, I created a model and had it printed.

Opus Pixellatum model for the Mugen Mosaic.

I installed the model under a sheet of transparent vinyl on a bench in my studio. 

The model under its vinyl sheet.

I cut a piece of fiberglass mesh to be glued on top of it (the dark rectangle on the bench above the model)

And started to glue my tesserae on top of the mesh. 

The Mugen Mosaic, first tesserae laid.

I first lay every other tesserae, because it helps the glue set faster, and also because it allows me to later use - if I decide to do so -  colors different from what is called by the model. This is one of the many variations allowed by Opus Pixellatum. 

Mugen Mosaic, 50 % of tesserae laid. 

At this stage, I have to lay the remaining tesserae, I will use some iridescent tiles in lieu of the regular ones to complete the piece. Once everything is set, I will remove the enmeshed mosaic from the model, glue it to its support, and grout it. That will happen in the next article...

Tiles used for this mosaic are 8 mm recycled glass tiles from Mosaic Art Supply

If you would like to build yourself a mosaic portrait of your pet, I will create a model of it from your picture. This printed model comes with a list and quantities of the tiles needed and instructions to carry out the work. 

Beside the fact that such mosaic will end up costing you a fraction of the cost of a regular piece, you will have the great joy and satisfaction of building yourself a faithful and long lasting portrait of the beloved creature who faithfully shares or shared your life ! 

I am a French mosaicist

living in Headland, Alabama, USA.

My Art is about inspiring people.

You can see some of my work at www.mosaicblues.com

You can contact me either by phone 

at (334) 798 1639 or by email at 

frederic.lecut@mosaicblues.com

You can also subscribe to my

MosaicBlues Newsletter

Custom Mosaic Models

Lisez cet article en Francais

Have you ever been tempted to give a try at mosaic art but felt overwhelmed by the apparent complexity of the task ? 

Martelina and tagliolo, traditional tools of mosaic artists for 2500 years.

I created in 2015 a new and easy to implement mosaic technique. I named it “Opus Pixellatum”.
  

Opus Pixellatum is the perfect introductory technique to mosaic art. Because at the beginning this technique only uses square tiles of the same dimensions, disposed in horizontal and vertical lines, no cuts are needed. You simply have to glue your tiles on a model, fill the gap between them, and voila, your mosaic is complete.

How does this work ?

You send me a picture of what you would like to represent in mosaic. 

Cheetah cub from Serengeti Desert.

From your picture, I create a model. This model looks like a spreadsheet. 

The laminated model on the bench

It is composed of many little squares with numbers in it.

The lower left corner of the model of Cheetah cub mosaic .

Each number corresponds to a specific tile color. I also provide the quantities you’ll need of each tile. 

Cheetah Cub Mosaic tiles
Tile reference	Number of tiles
1	100
26	250
27	300
29	100
32	100
42	1400
43	200
44	860
46	454
47	200
49	300
62	1206
65	100
66	1089
69	450
95	100
96	150
104	250
108	100
109	286

The references are those of the 8 mm glass tiles from Mosaicartsupply in Atlanta, GA.

You can order the tiles from Mosaic Art Supply or I can order them for you.


If you wish to use different tiles, I can design a model based on your own colors.




Once you have your model and tiles, you can go to work.

Lay your model on your working bench and start gluing your tiles on it. You can use any water soluble glue such as Elmer’s glue.

Cheetah cub mosaic on its first day.

On this particular Cheetah mosaic, I was working in reverse method, gluing my tiles upside down on top of my laminated model.

To work in direct method, you will set a piece of fiberglass mesh on top of your laminated model and glue your tiles on this mesh. 

Amy's eyes mosaic portrait. half the tiles laid on mesh.

After a while, your mosaic is ready to mount on a rigid frame.

Cheetah cub mosaic, all tiles laid.

If you worked reverse method as I did this Cheetah mosaic, you will glue the support on top of it. 

Cheetah cub mosaic with its support glued on its top.

If you worked direct method, you will simply lift  the mesh from the laminated model and glue it on top of its support. 

Daniel's eyes mosaic has just been glued onto its support.

Once your mosaic is set on its support – a few hours in direct method, 48 hours in reverse method – you can grout and finish it.

The Author beside the completed Cheetah cub mosaic portrait.

Cheetah Cub above was realized in colors, whereas Amy's eyes below were built in Grayscale. 

The model and the mosaic !

From a same model, many, many variations are possible. You can change the palette of colors from Gray scale to Sepia, Blue scale, or inverted Gray scale. You can also chose to realize parts of the mosaic in regular Opus Tessellatum – the classical Roman or Greek Technique. 

Opus Pixellatum is an amazingly versatile technique. It starts as “mosaic by number” and later allows you an infinity of variations. The great beauty of this technique is that it allows a total beginner to realize a very beautiful first piece ! 

Students of the April 2017 Mosaic Fiesta Seminar in Atlanta, GA.

In a next article I’ll share with you some amazing mosaics made by some of my students and clients. 

If you would like to create your own mosaic based on your own picture or design, please contact me at (334) 798 1639 or frederic.lecut@mosaicblues.com

I am a French Mosaic Artist.

in 1992, Alabama became my home

My Art is about inspiring people.

You can also subscribe to my  

MOSAIC NEWSLETTER

3 ways to improve your Mosaic Art Models

In March 2017, during our first Mosaic Art Fiesta I introduced Opus Pixellatum to a group of confirmed mosaic artists. They had traveled from all over the USA to the Mosaic Art Supply warehouse in Decatur, Georgia.

In Opus Pixellatum you build your Mosaic exclusively with square tiles of the same dimensions. There is no cutting. The tiles are arranged on pattern of rows and columns in the same manner as the pixels of a digital photography. 

Model of a Yezidi Warrior mosaic eyes portrait.

2 weeks ahead of the seminar the participants had sent me pictures of their faces and I created a model so they could build a mosaic portrait of their eyes during the seminar.

An Opus Pixellatum model looks like a spreadsheet. Each cell bears a number corresponding to a color of a tile to be glued on that spot. Although this sounds a lot like “Mosaic by Number”,  I came to realize through my experimentation with this method during the past 18 month that Opus Pixellatum allows for many dramatic variations.

Blue Carole, Mosaic Eyes Portrait being built.

With Opus Pixellatum the Mosaic artist can unleash her creativity in ways a more classical Opus Tesselatum approach does not allow. This will be the object of future posts.


While I was generating the models, I realized that the quality of the original picture has a great influence on the final result.

For this seminar, we were working with a grayscale palette composed of 7 nuances : Black, White, and 5 nuances of Gray.

Grayscale palette, 8mm elementile tiles from Mosaic Art Supply

I have realized many mosaics with this very accurate palette.

Yezidi 37, Opus Pixellatum mosaic portrait of a Yezidi Warrior

So you want your well balanced original to actually display a wide array of grayscale. If the contrast is too high, you might end up with only 2 or 3 nuances of gray. This is acceptable on a smaller mosaic but a bigger piece will look much better with the 5 nuances of gray.

When you create your model, the first operation is to turn the picture from Color to Black and White. Often named “Desaturation” this operation can be performed in many different ways, with different results as you can see here.

Original photography & 3 types of desaturation.

A black and white picture cannot be desaturated because it already is. You can alter it in different ways, but you wont have the same array of choices you have when you desaturate yourself. 

Advice # 1 : Start from a color picture.


Lighting. 
In order to show all the nuances of your grayscale palette in a balanced way, your original picture should not be too contrasted. It is very easy to boost the contrast of a picture but it is more difficult to decrease it without losing accuracy of the features.

Advice # 2 : Shoot your picture outdoors when the sun is low on the horizon (morning or evening).  An overcast day is perfect. Alternatively, ask a professional photographer to do this for you in a studio.


Format :
The best format to create a model is PNG. Most cameras shoot JPG (or JPEG) pictures. JPG files do not take much storage space but every time you modify a JPG picture, you lose some of its quality. So before you work on the picture first save it as a PNG file. Alternatively if you send me a picture to create a model, please send me the original picture – even a JPG - without editing it.

Advice #3 : Use PNG files




Basically, to get the best possible quality for your model :

• Shoot your picture outdoor in the morning, evening or with an overcast sky.
• Send me your original color picture without cropping or editing it. 
• Send it as a PNG file

2 different mosaic eyes realized in Atlanta last March

Mosaic sometimes can be intimidating. Opus Pixellatum is the easy door into this wonderful world. It allows beginners to build beautiful first mosaics from the beginning, and confirmed artist to unleash their creativity in amazing ways. If you would like to build a mosaic from your own picture, I'll build for you a kit including a model and the quantities and references of the tiles to order from Mosaic Art Supply in Atlanta, GA.

I am a French mosaic artist  established in Alabama. In 2015 I created a new mosaic technique. I named  it Opus Pixellatum. When I realized this technique allowed for much more than I was expecting I decided to share it with confirmed mosaicists.
If you'd like me to create a model of a custom mosaic pattern from one of your picture, please contact me by email at frederic.lecut@mosaicblues.com 

or by phone at (334) 798 1639 
You can also subscribe to my   Mosaic Newsletter